by Emma Galloway Stephens
PARIS MOUNTAIN
after George Ella Lyon
I am from the roots of a mountain
that tourists call a molehill.
She’s older than the whippersnappers
out west. Stooped. A traveler at rest.
She knows the old magic
the pioneers forgot.
Her shoulders shawled with kudzu,
her spine ridged with pine,
forearms roped with oak, knuckles knotted,
pockets full of possums.
She welcomed my tender feet
when I ran crying to the creek,
full of unfinished poems,
prayers I couldn’t say aloud.
I built fairy houses of bark and moss,
tossed boats of leaves and wishes
into the slow, soft water,
waited in the thorns
to hear the horns of passing deer.
When rare snow fell, it fell here.
Her rocks and trees made sense to me
when the rest of the world did not.
I like to think she never forgot.
EMMA GALLOWAY STEPHENS
Emma Galloway Stephens is a neurodivergent poet and professor from the Appalachian foothills of South Carolina. Her poems have appeared in Red Branch Review, The Christian Century, Door is a Jar, Salvation South, and many others. She’s the author of No Billboard Gospel (Solum Literary Press, 2026). Read more at egstephenspoetry.com or follow her on IG (@egstephenspoetry).